Am I doing this right?

jimistone

jimistone

long standing member
I record with Cubase and it has multiple levels of undo. When I'm recording a song I may make several passes on each track. It saves all that to an audio folder. After several songs that have untold scores of passes on each track...the audio folder may have 80 gb of audio. Most of it is throw away. When you look in the audo folder it's like: audio 0014/87439 and hundreds of audio bits labeled like that. Its impossible to go through it and separate the good from the deleteable stuff.

Is there a way to quickly identify and delete all the unused tracks of a project, in the audio folder, when it's finished so as not to take up hard drive space with a lot of junk?
 
Yes. As long as you keep each project in its own folder and all of the audio connect to it in a sub folder of that, you can use Cubase's utility to "Clean" the audio directory. I don't use Cubase anymore, so I can't tell you where to look or exactly what it's called. Probably under the File menu??? You need to make sure that you've deleted or cropped or consolidated or bounced or whatever so that the project doesn't reference anything but what you want to keep, and then the utility will find and delete any files not used in the project.

If you share an audio folder across different projects this will fuck everything up!
 
My comment is based on my experience in Reaper, but other DAWs must offer the same features. If you record multiple takes, the DAW will save them as takes on the track. You can click between the saved takes, which makes a breeze of comping.

If you don't want to save all the old takes, there's an option to delete them. Then the corresponding audio files become unused files in the project folder. There's a global command to "Clean" that folder and delete unused files.
 
The problem on Cubase is that you can get into real trouble if you don't label your tracks properly. Track 01_01.wav or other auto named label can be very troublesome if you have swapped file locations in the middle of a project.

The normal practice would be to open the media pool, and you can see the video and audio files. If you right click the audio folder you get the option to delete unused files - these will be the ones not currently in the project. You can then empty the trash - note, this is not the recycle bin, but a trash bin within cubase. It gives you the option to put these files elsewhere if you want - but remember you need to create the project folders from within Cubase - usually from the first screen - new project - then you get the sub folders created for you. Plonking things into existing folders gets messy. I cannot emphasise the criticality of naming things, because having thousands of files called audio01_01.wav makes hunting for lost files when you mess up, very, very frustrating. I have thousands of these, and when I find them, I stick them in a folder called orphans - and when I open an ancient project and it cannot find a file, by comparisons of dates and times, you can often make an educated guess.
 
rob aylestone said:
The problem on Cubase is that you can get into real trouble if you don't label your tracks properly. Track 01_01.wav or other auto named label can be very troublesome if you have swapped file locations in the middle of a project.

The normal practice would be to open the media pool, and you can see the video and audio files. If you right click the audio folder you get the option to delete unused files - these will be the ones not currently in the project. You can then empty the trash - note, this is not the recycle bin, but a trash bin within cubase. It gives you the option to put these files elsewhere if you want - but remember you need to create the project folders from within Cubase - usually from the first screen - new project - then you get the sub folders created for you. Plonking things into existing folders gets messy. I cannot emphasise the criticality of naming things, because having thousands of files called audio01_01.wav makes hunting for lost files when you mess up, very, very frustrating. I have thousands of these, and when I find them, I stick them in a folder called orphans - and when I open an ancient project and it cannot find a file, by comparisons of dates and times, you can often make an educated guess.
Click to expand...
I never knew this. Everything I have recorded is numbered like that and all lumped together in the audio folder. 70gb worth
 
Now that i know cubase has a feature that deletes unused files....i may be able to use a smaller hard drive that the 1 T ssd hard drive I had in mind for my new computer
Lol
 
Sounds like the process and potential flaws are just the same as with Protools.
PT has an option in each session to remove/clear unused audio. That's all the takes that you deleted from the timeline but which remain in the audio folder.

When I have completed a session I compress it (for temp backup, run the above, then quit and reload to make sure everything's still there.
If it's all good, I delete the compressed backup.

So far I've never had cause to call on the compressed file but you know the drill - the one time you don't back up blah blah blah.....

How much space you save is directly proportional to how good the musicians are. ;)
I generally get a shitload of space back! :eek:

If cubase has a similar feature, as Ashcat suggests, I'd recommend taking a session-zip first, like I do.
 
jimistone said:
Now that i know cubase has a feature that deletes unused files....i may be able to use a smaller hard drive that the 1 T ssd hard drive I had in mind for my new computer
Lol
Click to expand...

1TB would probably be overkill for most, for a system drive.
Unless you plan on storing a lot of other media there (listening music/photo libraries etc) I'd always go system small - storage big.
I do a range of all sorts of stuff and 256 has been fine as a system drive so far.
 
Just remember that these things don't check to see if the files are part of any other project than the one you're looking at, so if you're not keeping your projects and their audio files in discrete folders, you can't use the Clean feature or it will delete things you need/want for other projects.
jimistone said:
I never knew this. Everything I have recorded is numbered like that and all lumped together in the audio folder. 70gb worth
Click to expand...
In Reaper, there is a way to Save As... and move or copy all of the audio files at the same time. If Cubase has something similar, it's not really too late. It can be tedious, but nowhere near as bad as trying to go through every audio file by hand.

From now on, don't ever use that single audio repository. Save every project to its own folder before you start recording.
 
The media pool window is really handy for making sure the right things are where they should be. I can't remember which version it was when it changed - and the audio folder popped up in every directory created from that initial new window. I don't think they made it very clear in terms of implications. My usual workflow is to create a song title like beginning v1-initial track, then I re-save it as beginning v2 sax added, then beginning v3 piano-iffy - stuff like that that explains the progress, but lets me go back to old versions. Once I get to V12 or so, I'll create a new folder called old beginning (beginning being the song name). Then I move versions 1 to 11 into it. This can be a problem if you go back, because if you have used the pool delete feature from v12, you can lose some tracks that were live in version 10 - so after fruitless hours searching, I actually delete very little, and it's a real pain when you have years of archive material.

You really need to instigate a process from day one, and for most of us, going back is impossible. I hate it when I load up a project and it tells me a file is missing - AND - it's always a stupid one with an un-named filename. On filenames - it's also very easy to get into bad habits with those too. If you use the same instruments or singers 'Bass" is very unhelpful too - because every damn song has a track called bass. I spent an hour yesterday looking for a track called Ian Vox - hundreds and hundreds of them. File management is stupidly important and we mess it up all the time.
 
I sympathize with the OP. Samplitude saves everything, a .wav along with 3 other 'bits'. If they get separated the track cannot be played (well the .wav can)

But, USB caddies are incredibly cheap and I just yesterday saw 1TB spinners for well under £50. USB 3.0 is so fast that you really can just dump stuff off and worry about it later..Or never!

Since the R ware attack I have duped all my files onto 2 external drives, one 750G 'tother 1TB and a third 2TB NAS (but that is bloody slow!)

Dave.
 
This is easy in SONAR - just do a "save as" to a new folder with "copy audio to project" checked and it will only copy the clips currently associated with the project.

Then just delete the original folder.

I know this doesn't help you much but it's food for thought.
 
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